


Angelic and pretty

by UmiAzuma



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky Barnes is confused, I should have included Sam but somehow he didn't want to work with this, Japanese street fashion, Loki and Steve are fashion twins, Lolita Fashion, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers and Lolita fashion, Steve Rogers likes frilly dresses, Thor Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark is a little shit too, baby the stars shine bright, i don't know what the fuck i'm doing, just throw it in the bag, loki is a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 20:15:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2283132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmiAzuma/pseuds/UmiAzuma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky rues the day they found the store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angelic and pretty

**Author's Note:**

> The Baby, The Stars Shine Bright store is, indeed, in Allen St. and is the number #158, I did a lot of research and it is my dream to actually visit that store if I ever set foot in New York.
> 
> Also, the Swan Lake ballerinas dress does exist, it is called Le Lac des Cygnes Odette print and can be found for your viewing pleassure here: http://hellolace.net/wardrobe/baby-the-stars-shine-bright/type/op/item/92/   
> Loki probably wanted it in all black and Steve got the spare white with black ballerinas one.

Bucky rues the day they found the store.

They changed routes from Bucky’s work to their apartment because there had been trouble with the street they usually took to go home, and they ended up in Allen Street, in a road they had not used frequently and actually hadn’t been to in quite some time. Now, the street was filled with trendy fashion stores and at least two Japanese-style restaurants. Steve demanded a place to rest, and they went into one of the restaurants, it turned out to be a crepery, where they also served bubble tea, Steve sipped on his bubble tea (bought with Bucky’s money) and they shared a crepe while they rested.

As soon as they walked a few feet away from the crepery, Bucky knew something was wrong.

He would never, EVER forget the #158 store. The walls were black with long windows and a pink cover sign that read “Baby, the Stars Shine Bright”, next to that, another one read “Tokyo Rebel”, Steve stood there, staring at the big display windows, his big eyes looking from one display to the other and the other, skinny arms shaking with something Bucky never could decipher.

“Let’s go in there…” He whispered, and dragged Bucky into the immaculately white-walled store.

It had been a terrible blow for Stevie. He didn’t want to go home.

The cheerful girl inside was wearing a wine colored dress with white blouse and white accessories, perfectly clean wine colored shoes and her blood-red hair done in perfect curls, she greeted them as ‘Natalie’ and proceeded to answer each and every one of Steve’s questions. Yes, these were regular clothes, yes, people wore this on a regular basis, in fact, Natalie herself wore them all the time, but just for work or meet ups, she said, yes, boys could wear the dresses too if they wanted to, in fact she knew someone who did, occasionally, and yes, unfortunately, they were very pricey, particularly for Steve’s poor, starving artist/college student budget. Bucky had to suffer through Steve’s rant about overpriced pretty clothes all the way back home, and then later, when they were about to go to sleep too.

 

If he was going to blame someone, though, it was probably going to be Tony Fucking Stark.

That and Steve’s ability to actually get a job that didn’t hurt his health too much AND didn’t clash with his classes. Thor’s tattoo parlor was as good a place as any for a poor art student to start working. Steve actually did want to be a tattoo artist, so Thor gave him a chance.

It turns out it was Loki, Thor’s brother and Tony’s long suffering on-again off-again boyfriend who Natalie was talking about at the store. He showed up to bring Thor lunch from their mother one day, when Steve was manning the front desk at the shop, and Steve almost cries.

“Can you give this to my oaf of a brother? I am already late for a meet up; tell him our mother said he forgot this at home. Thank you.”

It was another terrible blow for him. It became worse when Tony said he had broken up with Loki a while ago, but then they got back together a week before the incident, so sometimes Loki would be there, but Steve never saw him wearing one of the pretty dresses when he hung out with them.

The fact remained that Steve had seen Loki. He had seen Loki and he had seen what he was wearing and that he was pretty proud with it, so Steve saved money but after a month, he still didn’t have enough for the pretty dress with the Swan Lake ballerinas in it and it made him terribly sad. He cried for like a week. Bucky counted the days. Every time there was a mention of swans or ballerinas, he would get teary eyed, remembering the dumb Swan Lake dress.

 

Tony Fucking Stark got him the stupid Swan Lake ballerinas dress.

He actually got it for Loki, but he said he “didn’t want it in that color, Tony, why didn’t you ask me what color I wanted?” So he put it back into the pink Baby, The Stars Shine Bright bag and handed it to Steve, who beamed and cried and told Tony that as soon as he figured out how to handle the tattoo machine he’d give him some free ink and Tony dismissed it and said Loki already owed him some ink and he didn’t really want it.

Steve bought the rest of the coordinate instead, with the rest of his savings, a blouse and a head bow and lots of other things; in the end he had the whole thing sitting on his closet for a few months before actually gathering enough courage to actually wear it.

He did it at a very convenient time; too, since Tony finally managed to get the dress Loki wanted in the color he wanted it. It was the exact same dress, just in another color. Bucky wanted to slap him because what difference did the color even make?

They wore their dresses with the same Swan Lake ballerinas on the same day, with the same accessories… In different colors. Loki was sensible enough to lend Steve a wig so he wouldn’t look strange with his really short hair. It was a blond wig with soft curls that bounced elegantly every time Steve moved, and was an exact match to Loki’s black wig, their head bows had pearls, and their shoes clicked against the pavement as they walked together under Loki’s black parasol.

Bucky, Tony and Thor walked behind them, and occasionally, Thor would fend off some rude bystanders who thought it was okay to look at the two boys in disgust.

Loki was smarter, whenever someone tried to take a picture of them; he put the parasol right in front of the camera, so anyone who tried would get a big black parasol instead.

Bucky hadn’t seen Steve so happy in such a long time, so he let it slide.

 

It was the worst decision he had ever made in his life, he thought later.

The thing is Steve was very good at earning money now. He graduated and started getting small tattoo jobs on Thor’s shop from time to time, and then started getting bigger ones as time went by, which earned him more money and actually got him the chance of getting more dresses, all of which sat on his closet until Loki was in the mood to try to convince Steve to wear one to go out. To the surprise of absolutely no one, some of the dresses he got were the same prints Loki possessed, which made it easy for them to “twin up” and go around walking under frilly parasols that helped them avoid unwanted photographs.

Soon Loki decided it was okay for Steve to actually venture to the meet ups and meet the New York community of girls who wore the same dresses, that included Natalie, who later revealed that her name was actually Natasha and she was from Russia, she had moved a while ago when she had been hired by the Baby, The Stars Shine Bright store and was happily living and working in New York now.

The girls from the community were varied and gathered from all zones of New York. They were delighted to meet Steve and discover he made an adorable “brolita”, one even dared to say that he was more adorable than Loki, which had him sulking for a while, until someone else pointed out the fact that they were the best twin coordinates she had ever seen before.

Steve was the happiest he’d been in a while when he came back to the apartment that day, talking nonstop about the lovely girls he met and the places they went to. Bucky felt, for a moment, that he was losing his best friend to this new passion of his.

 

Then came the secrets. Natasha had told him not to look at the website, but Loki had been angry and throwing a hissy fit and Steve HAD to look. They said he was terrible, that he lacked a style or a personality, that he was just trying to copy Loki and even called him “ita” —He learned later what that meant.—, Steve cried in Bucky’s arms, asking him why those girls who had seemed so nice had acted so viciously then. Loki was seething, he told Steve that it probably wasn’t even girls from New York, that girls from other states were sometimes vicious and cruel and jealous, and they didn’t even know him anyway so who gave them the right to speak about Steve like that?

A lot of girls from other communities and the girls from New York rushed to defend Steve, one of them, a girl named Melinda, who commonly wore boy-style clothes, urged Steve to make more coordinates, not like the ones Loki wore, and sometimes she and Natasha would help him mix and match the things he had to make them work in different ways, and proceeded to show the world how original Steve could be. His artistic vein took over, and he was soon making his own coordinates, combining colors and prints no one even thought about, and soon he was being praised by people all over the world on the internet, not only because of his fantastic and artistic style, but because whenever someone asked him something or praised him, he was incredibly sweet and amiable.

 

Everyone saw it coming; Bucky didn’t know why he didn’t.

One day he came home to find a box in his bed labeled “Fan+Friend”. He was a little reluctant about opening the package, and when he did, he wondered why he wasn’t surprised. Steve stood outside his room, a yellow gingham sundress on (it was summer, and for a strange reason, Steve had decided to start wearing dresses made of light fabric around the apartment, and even sometimes wore a few of his dresses to work, careful never to get ink stains on them) and a mischievous smile on his lips. Inside the box was a vest, a waistcoat, a white shirt with a detachable cravat and long puffy sleeves and a pair of pants, all in varying shades of black.

“Would you come to a meet up with me?”

Bucky hadn’t understood at first why Steve wanted him to go, it seemed like a thing that was only Steve’s, something he hadn’t wanted Bucky to be a part of, but apparently, he had been wrong. Now, standing in the middle of their small living room, with Steve fixing his cravat and adjusting his waistcoat dutifully, he actually understood that Steve wanted him to be a part of his passion too, to understand him and to support him.

While Steve busied himself with the waistcoat, Bucky suddenly cupped his face and kissed him. It was an impulse thing, Bucky hadn’t known at first why he had done it, but the more time passed the more it made sense to him, maybe he had always loved Steve, maybe the fact that he saw him now, all dolled up and ready to share something that was so special to him with Bucky made him realize it, maybe it had always been there, but now, he wanted Steve to know.

“About damn time, jerk.” Steve said, smiling, after their lips parted, then he straightened Bucky’s cravat yet again. “Come on, we’re gonna be late and I don’t want to miss the macaroons, if we don’t hurry, Natasha’s gonna eat them all up.”

The little shit had known all along and Bucky hadn’t.

That’s probably the reason why he decided to go with Steve to any other meet up he attended from then on.

The #158 store at Allen Street becomes his favorite place from then on.


End file.
